Photo Friday–rocky shores

Happy New Year my makers of collage, my writers of art journals, my fans of assemblage! It’s so great to be back with you in the new year. We have so much exciting new stuff to share with you this year—please pull down on your safety harness and keep your hands inside the ride at all times . . .What am I saying?! Let loose! Try new things! Be adventurous!

Hopefully at least a few of you have plans to travel on your to do list for 2013. I thought I’d kick things off by sharing this photo of a small family home on the rocky western shores of Ireland.

This photo is one that I like to use over and over as I practice painting and collaging skies, houses, and natural terrain.

It’s not the fanciest of buildings but I love the small tide pools in the foreground, the rocky ledge, bits of tall grass and the foreboding skies.

Have you ever collaged a landscape from a photo? How would you start? You could certainly start as I did in the picture below with a aqua blue background and then build up layers. You could also pump up the forebodingness of the image by starting with black gesso as a base.

This piece of mine has, interestingly enough, found it’s way back to the sea. It’s in a private collection in a house on Cape Cod where I like to think it looks across the pond to it’s twin in Ireland.